Phil Hogan speaks! March 29, 2012

I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean the following to come out quite the way it did…

When asked if he would resign if fewer than half the households registered, he replied: “Seeing that I’m the first Minister to bring in a new tax without a proper household tax database, I’ll be sure that I’ll bring it in as best as I canand I will not be contemplating resignation.”

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and that 500,000 includes exactly how many of the 200,000 odd that are exempt from payment but are still asked to register? The government and RTE deliberately quote the number of people who have REGISTERED, not the number who have PAID. Even if half of that 200k is included in the government’s figure then it still shows a non-payment figure of 75%. It is explained here: http://nohouseholdtax.org/9-tds-demand-accurate-reporting-of-registration-figure/

Newstalk that 1% mouthpiece, had Tom Dunne i think! pay his charge live on the radio , and today they ran a headline on their site and tweeted that “27% have yet to pay household charge”, of course it was an error! or was it, desperate tactics froma worried establishment!

WBS the 72,000 are supposed to be postal receipts. There’s always been a suspicion that the government would hold back some payments towards the end to give the impression of a big surge and try to suggest that the non-payment cohort is under pressure. It is an old tactic, but it’s clear there is a very solid non-payment group out there. Interesting they refer to 10,000 people had “registered for waivers” in the past 24 hours but they are unwilling to give a total figure for waivers or exempt people who have registered. If the 7-1 ratio over between payments and waivers is anywhere near the true figure it would suggest is about 475,000 out of the 1.8million total.

Of course if the government would just come clean and publish a breakdown of the figures listing full payments, partial payments, waivers and bogus registrations then we would have a much better picture. Bogus registrations? Yes, I spoke to a number of people who registered under Mickey Mouse, Harry Potter and even Phil Hogan. Others gave the name of their dog or cat in response to the question on the form looking for pet names.